FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JACKSON FINE ART PRESENTS
GORDON PARKS: Segregation Story
ANDREW MOORE: The South
With a special exhibition in the viewing room,
STEVE SCHAPIRO: Selma
Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: January 23 – March 14, 2015
Jackson Fine Art is pleased to kick off the 2015 season with a selection of provocative images that both interrogate and celebrate the south. Solo exhibitions by Gordon Parks and Andrew Moore—two artists with a talent for poignantly documenting place—set an incisive gaze on the region, capturing public and private spheres with incredible intimacy. Also exhibited in the viewing room will be a series of Steve Schapiro’s rarely-seen photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
Multitalented writer, musician, and director (Shaft), Gordon Parks was the first African- American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine and the first black artist to produce and direct a major Hollywood film with 1969’s The Learning Tree. In 1956, he traveled to the segregated south on assignment for Life, creating a photo essay entitled “The Restraints: Open and Hidden,” which chronicled the daily lives of an extended family in Alabama. The portfolio’s presentation in full color at a time when most photo essays were still being published in black and white lends further strength to Parks’ depiction of the Jim Crow south.
Most of the photos for the Life series were presumed lost until they were rediscovered in 2011. A selection of the work, found in a folder labeled “Segregation Story,” was released upon discovery two years ago; now, The Gordon Parks Foundation has made public a new series of Parks’ color prints. Parks’ experiences as an African-American photographer exposing the realities of segregation are as compelling as the images themselves. While travelling through the south, Parks was threatened physically, there were attempts to damage his film and equipment, and the whole project was nearly undermined by another Life staffer. The Causey family, headed by Allie Lee and sharecropper Willie, were forced to leave their home in Shady Grove, Alabama, so incensed was the community over their collaboration with Parks for the story.
Parks’ segregation portfolio is currently on view at the High Museum and Jackson Fine Art in conjunction with The Gordon Parks Foundation. His work has been shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the New Orleans Museum of Art. An exhibition of Parks’ series of photographs taken in his hometown of Kansas City is forthcoming at that city’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Throughout Andrew Moore’s 35-year photographic career, he has positioned himself at the forefront of contemporary photography, capturing places of historical significance in all of their beauty and squalor. His work in Cuba, Russia, and post-recession Detroit has garnered international attention, and now his interest has turned to a regional exploration of the United States, particularly the American south, an area that has fascinated him since he first began to take pictures. Moore’s Southern renaissance is a revisitation and a way of marking time, allowing the artist to reflect on changes to the landscape as well as in his own life.
Andrew Moore was born 1957 in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. He is best known for his richly colored images of architectural and urban scenes particularly in Cuba, Russia, and Detroit. He teaches in the Photography M.F.A. program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His work is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Library of Congress, the Israel Museum, the High Museum, the Eastman House and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Moore has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The New York State Council on the Arts, and several private foundations.
On the heels of current national attention on race and the Oprah Winfrey-produced Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic Selma come Steve Schapiro’s rarely seen photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. An activist as well as a documentarian, Schapiro produced photo-essays covering some of the most turbulent and iconic movements of the 1960’s, the golden age of photojournalism. Freelancing for picture magazines, such as Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair, Schapiro was afforded the opportunity to cover many stories related to the Civil Rights Movement, such as the March on Washington, the Selma march for voter registration, and the climate in Memphis following the assassination of Dr. King. In his Selma photographs, marchers such as author James Baldwin, congressman and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, King advisor Ralph Abernathy, and Atlanta congressman John Lewis appear with nonviolent discipline. These previously unpublished images, recently rediscovered by Schapiro, commemorate Selma and its successful series of marches —the fifty-four-mile march to Montgomery pushed Lyndon Johnson to send voting-rights legislation to Washington— and could serve as inspiration to a new generation of demonstrators.
Born and raised in New York City, Steve Schapiro attended Amherst College and graduated from Bard College. Schapiro’s photographs were included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1968 exhibition “Harlem On My Mind”. His work can be found in the collection of the Smithsonian, The High Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. Steve Schapiro's recent solo shows were in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, London and Paris.